Different types of US election

With the festivity of election going on in the United States of America, we often wonder how the election of the most powerful country works. Obviously, electing the supreme president of the world is a tough job which goes through various other elections.

Let's have a look at the different kinds of election in the US:

The United States has a presidential system of government, which means that the executive and legislature are elected separately. Congressional and presidential elections take place simultaneously every four years, and the intervening Congressional elections, which take place every two years, are called midterm elections.

Federal elections

The government system of US is presidential, meaning the executive and legislature are elected separately. Every four years, congressional and presidential elections take place simultaneously.

Presidential elections

In a presidential election, the president and the vice president are elected together. It is an indirect election, with the winner being determined by votes cast by electors of the Electoral College. Voters in each state select a slate of electors from a list of several slates designated by different parties or candidates, and the electors typically promise in advance to vote for the candidates of their party .The winner of the election is the candidate with at least 270 Electoral College votes.

Electoral College votes are cast by individual states by a group of electors; each elector casts one Electoral College vote. Electors are usually committed to vote for a party candidate in advance.

Congressional elections

Congress has two chambers: (i) the Senate and (ii) the House of Representatives.

(i)    The Senate: The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. 

(ii)    The House of Representatives: The House of Representatives has 435 members, elected for a two-year term in single-seat constituencies. House of Representatives elections are held every two years on the first Tuesday after November 1 in even years. House elections are first-past-the-post elections that elect a Representative from each of 435 House districts that cover the United States. The selected people are called the congressmen.

State election
State law and state constitutions, controlled by state legislatures regulate elections at state level and local level. Various officials at state level are elected. Governors and lieutenant governors are elected in all states, in some states on a joint ticket and in some states separately, some separately in different electoral cycles.

Local Election
At the local level, county and city government positions are usually filled by election, especially within the legislative branch. The extent to which offices in the executive or judicial branches are elected vary from county-to-county or city-to-city. Some examples of local elected positions include sheriffs at the county level and mayors and school board members at the city level. Like state elections, an election for a specific local office may be held at the same time as either the presidential, midterm, or off-year elections.